The Rumanau are an indigenous

Indigenous peoples

Indigenous peoples are ethnic groups that are defined as indigenous according to one of the various definitions of the term, there is no universally accepted definition but most of which carry connotations of being the "original inhabitants" of a territory....

 ethnic group

Ethnic group

An ethnic group is a group of people whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage, often consisting of a common language, a common culture and/or an ideology that stresses common ancestry or endogamy...

 residing in Sabah

Sabah

Sabah is one of 13 member states of Malaysia. It is located on the northern portion of the island of Borneo. It is the second largest state in the country after Sarawak, which it borders on its southwest. It also shares a border with the province of East Kalimantan of Indonesia in the south...

, eastern Malaysia on the island of Borneo

Borneo

Borneo is the third largest island in the world and is located north of Java Island, Indonesia, at the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia....

. They are known as the Lobu in the Keningau

Keningau

Keningau is a sprawling timber and agricultural town and district located in the Interior Division of Sabah, east Malaysia on the island of Borneo...

 District near Lanas, and the Rumanau in the Masaum, Mangkawagu, Minusu areas of the Kinabatangan District along the Kinabatangan River

Kinabatangan River

The Kinabatangan River is located in Sabah, eastern Malaysia, on the island of Borneo. It is the second longest river in Malaysia, with a length of 560 kilometers from its headwaters in the mountains of southwest Sabah, to its outlet at the Sulu Sea, east of Sandakan.Kinabatangan is known for its...

, in Sandakan Division

Sandakan Division

Sandakan Division is an administrative division of Sabah, East Malaysia, on the island of Borneo. It stretches diagonally from the northeastern coast of Sabah to the state's central region. With an area of 28,205 square kilometres, it occupies 38.3% of Sabah's territory, and is thus the largest of...

. Their population was estimated at 2,800 in the year 1991. They are a sub-group of the Kadazan-Dusun

Kadazan-Dusun

Kadazan-Dusun is the term assigned to the unification of the classification of two indigenous tribes in Sabah, Malaysia—the ethnic groups Kadazan and Dusun.- History :...

, although their language (ISO 639-3

ISO 639-3

ISO 639-3:2007, Codes for the representation of names of languages — Part 3: Alpha-3 code for comprehensive coverage of languages, is an international standard for language codes in the ISO 639 series. The standard describes three‐letter codes for identifying languages. It extends the ISO 639-2...

 ruu) belongs to the Paitanic branch of the Austronesian

Austronesian languages

The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia that are spoken by about 386 million people. It is on par with Indo-European, Niger-Congo, Afroasiatic and Uralic as one of the...

language family.